


Advent

by Pollydoodles



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-06 07:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 7,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8739505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollydoodles/pseuds/Pollydoodles
Summary: adventˈadv(ə)nt,-vɛnt/nounnoun: advent; plural noun: advents; noun: AdventOld English, from Latin adventus ‘arrival’, from advenire, from ad- ‘to’ + venire ‘come’.    1.    the arrival of a notable person or thing.





	1. December 1st

December 1st. 

 

“Nice digs.”

Bucky looked up from where he was sat on the couch, Steve slumped next to him and snoring gently with his mouth open. Kid had never learned elegance in sleep, not in the 1930s and not even after nearly a century’s worth of life. Bucky was just glad he no longer had to share a room with him. 

The petite brunette who’d spoken was stood in the doorway to the common room, a knitted maroon hat jammed over dark curls and both arms wrapped around a sagging cardboard box. Bucky blinked, and lowered the newspaper he’d been reading slightly. Steve snorted and shifted in his sleep, head sinking down onto Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Well, he’s a little less gentlemanly than he looks on television,” the girl remarked, with a grin and a nod towards Steve. Bucky glanced down at the big blond now practically nestled into the crook of his arm, then back up at the girl, brow furrowed toward her. She kneed up the bottom of the box, threatening to spill its contents across the hardwood flooring. 

“Darcy! Where did you get to? The labs are downstairs-”

A new voice, female again but not from the girl in the doorway. She threw him a sheepish look and turned on her heel. Bucky noticed that the hems of the jeans she wore dragged on the floor, ragged and torn, flapping around pink sneakers the likes of which he’d never seen in his youth. His jaw worked, but nothing came out. 

She left him with what he supposed was a cheery wave over her shoulder, not looking back as she disappeared.


	2. December 2nd

December 2nd.

The little brunette trailed after the other one, hands shoved into jean pockets and sneakers scuffing along Stark’s marble floors like she didn’t give a shit where she was. Perhaps she didn’t. Bucky watched her from the balcony, arms resting on the polished chrome and eyebrows knitted together as he watched her. 

“Buck?”

He looked up to his left and found Steve looking back at him, an easy smile pasted on his broad face. He was dressed in a loose sweater, soft material falling over his hips where it was a little too long for him even as it was a touch too tight in the chest. Bucky snorted to himself. Kid was destined to never have clothes that fit, whether he was too small for ‘em or much too large. 

“What you lookin’ at?”

Steve settled next to him, also leaning over the balcony and staring down at the commotion in the lobby. Bucky grunted and jerked his head at the small procession. The brunette - the one who’d wandered into the common room the day before - was resting her ass against one of the obnoxiously bright couches Stark had pride of place in the foyer. The other girl, the one Bucky presumed had called for her yesterday, directed a veritable horde of men as they carried in box after box. 

“Oh,” Steve said, smiling again, this time at the goings on downstairs. “That’s Jane Foster-” he pointed toward the other girl who was running a hand through light brown hair and looking harried. Bucky nodded to himself, committing both name and face to memory as he watched her. 

“She’s Thor’s, uh, well I guess you’d’ve called her his squeeze, back in the day,” Steve grinned a little, blue eyes flashing bright with some memory that Bucky wasn’t going to try and share with him. Too many memories were lost to him, and he wasn’t up to watching the other man’s face fall when he realised that whatever he was thinking about was yet another one. 

Bucky nodded, and Steve looked back to the hive of activity below them. The other girl - Jane, Bucky reminded himself, Jane Foster - was hopping from one foot to the other, biting on nails as men hefted through more and more boxes in front of her. 

“Careful with that one,” she yelped, darting forward as one of them slipped and a box dropped an inch or so before being caught again. She looked up at the man accusingly, hands on hips. “That’s a very sensitive piece of equipment you know, it-”

“-is one of a kind. Made it myself. Can’t be replaced.”

The brunette, grinning, joined in with Foster and her smile only widened when the other girl spun on her heel and shot her a glare. Pushing herself off the couch and slinging an arm around the other woman’s shoulders casually, she winked. 

“Give them a break, Janey. They know what they’re doing.”

Bucky watched as the first girl sagged a little, and then proffered up a tiny smile of her own with not a small amount of effort. She opened her mouth to reply just as a large crash echoed throughout the foyer, little tinkling sounds of glass dancing across marble following it like rain on a tin roof. Throwing the brunette an anguished look, she ducked out of the embrace and headed for the source of the noise. 

The brunette - Darcy, he remembered, looking down at her - pulled a face looking after her friend. She glanced upwards and spotted the pair of them staring down at the foyer floor. Tilting her head to one side, she grinned up and pulled off a sloppy salute before spinning on her heel and followed Foster. 

“Friend of yours?” Steve asked in bemusement, turning to Bucky, who shrugged in response.


	3. December 3rd

December 3rd.

 

“Tin man, did you eat the last of the cornflakes? Again?” 

Bucky, hunched over the kitchen island on stool almost too light to take his weight, glanced up briefly as Stark addressed him from the other end of the counter. He swallowed the last mouthful of cornflakes from his bowl and shook his head. At his side, Steve rolled his eyes but said nothing. 

Stark raised an eyebrow, but carried on walking, headed to the coffee machine. Flicking more switches than Bucky considered really necessary for a single cup of joe, the other man sighed heavily and propped a hip against the counter as he waited for the machine to do its thing. 

“Between you, Head Eagle Scout over there-” 

Steve frowned between bites of toast, but said nothing. Bucky elbowed him in the ribs. 

“-Foster and Lewis, I’m being eaten out of house and home right about now,” Stark remarked. The coffee machine beeped enthusiastically and the man took the steaming cup gratefully, all but sticking his nose into it and inhaling deeply before taking a long drag. 

“You taking my name in vain again?” 

Stark half turned, mug still raised to his mouth, to find a grinning brunette with arms folded over her chest looking back at him, one foot tapping on the hardwood floor as she spoke. Bucky found himself sitting up a little straighter on his stool without being quite sure as to why. Beside him, Steve munched on another slice of toast, seemingly oblivious to the newcomer. 

“If the cap fits, Lewis,” Stark shot back as the girl wandered toward him. Bucky noticed she was wearing the same bright pink sneakers as before. The jeans were different, but had just as many rips and stains splattered across them. She stuck a mug into the coffee machine and flipped switches until the machine shuddered into action again. 

She turned, resting against the counter with elbows braced and long dark hair curling over her shoulder as she relaxed. 

“Oh, hey,” the girl said, nodding toward Bucky with a smile of recognition passing over her face as she did so. Across from her, Stark shook his head, coffee mug half drunk in one hand and the other hand stealing a slice of toast from Steve’s plate. The soldier half-heartedly swatted at Stark without looking up from the newspaper he was perusing. 

“Oh no, he, uh, he doesn’t talk,” Stark said, spraying crumbs as he spoke. The girl’s brow knitted slightly and she glanced between him and where Bucky was sat at the end of the kitchen island. He bent his head slightly, but kept his eyes on her from behind a curtain of dark hair that fell over his face. 

“Doesn’t talk?” She said, a hint of uncertainty creeping through her voice. Stark shook his head again, draining the last of the coffee from his mug and sliding it across the counter toward the girl. She picked it up almost reflexively, and placed it in the sink behind her as the coffee machine beeped loudly. 

“Selective mute, or so I’m told,” Stark shrugged, giving Bucky a cursory glance from where he was standing. Bucky could feel Steve tense at his side, could sense the muscles coiling under shirt and pants, and nudged at the other man’s elbow with his own. “Doesn’t say a single word, not even to the big guy over here.” He indicated Steve, who flickered his eyes up at the other man, more than a touch of annoyance in his gaze, before looking across at the girl briefly. 

Stark laughed. “Maybe he just doesn’t like any of us.”

“Maybe,” the girl agreed, without looking at Bucky again. She took up the coffee mug from the machine and curled both hands around it, taking a sip before her head came up and she fixed Stark with a calculating look. “Can’t really blame him in that case, can you?”

With that, she turned and crossed the room, only to pause at the doorway and look back over her shoulder at the man. 

“When are you going to decorate this place, Stark?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. “It’s December already, and you’d never know it.”

Stark, for his part, scoffed. 

“Better things to do, Lewis,” he said, laughing a little. “Robots to build, scientific theories to challenge. You can tinsel the place if you fancy. Company credit card is in my top left hand drawer,” he paused, giving her a once over from battered sneakers to the bright orange sweater that hung off one shoulder. 

“It’s all yours,” he continued, with a grin. “Assuming you can get into my office, of course.”


	4. December 4th

December 4th

 

“You look like a man who’s up for some wrong-doing.”

Bucky glanced up from where he was sat, awaiting Steve to return, to find the brunette girl leaning against the doorjamb of the common room. She grinned at him, all white teeth and mischievous blue eyes under a mass of dark hair. 

He looked away. 

Mostly. 

Undeterred, the girl wandered forward, and in one smooth motion flung herself onto the other end of the couch, legs slung over the arm and crossed at the ankles. Her dark hair spread across the deep red material of the seat and she tilted her head to gaze at him, arms folded behind it. 

Bucky shuffled to the left. 

He kept her in the corner of his eye. 

She grinned more widely. 

“I’m just saying,” she started again, legs straightening with those battered pink sneakers trailing untied laces as she brought her feet together. “I think you look like the kind of guy who would help a girl out if she asked.”

Bucky turned to her then, eyebrows knitting together as he looked down at her. She stared back up at him, still reclining easily on the couch with her arms propping up her head. The orange sweater had been swapped for a knitted blue one, threads of an iridescent purple running through it here and there. Bucky reflected that looking at this girl was a veritable assault on the senses. 

He couldn’t seem to stop himself doing it, though. 

“You can’t possibly not want to get one over on Stark.”


	5. December 5th

December 5th.

 

“You know,” she said conversationally. “My dad always said I talked enough for at least three people.” 

Bucky blinked at her. 

“I just mean, you know,” she said, carrying on despite the look on his face. Without, Bucky realised, not even actually looking at his face. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like talking. I talk enough for a whole roomful of people. Pretty sure a lot of ‘em would prefer I shut up once in a while. Could you just pass me that-” 

Her fingers outstretched to the left, and Bucky followed the line of them to where she was pointing. He picked up the sliver of wire and handed it over silently, sitting back on his heels. The girl was on her knees, the keyhole to Stark’s office roughly at eye-level for her. The tip of her pink tongue poked out to one side as she considered the lock. 

Bucky wondered briefly why she didn’t simply ask him to put metal shoulder to wooden door, knowing full well that whatever fancy alarm system Stark might have set up wouldn’t pass muster against brute force, but kept quiet. It wasn’t entirely true, what the billionaire had said the day before, that he didn’t speak to anyone. 

It was just that he so often had nothing to say. 

What could he say, really? In the face of this new century, with its odd customs, and odder people. He’d either seen too much or not enough, and neither was usually appropriate for polite conversation. Steve didn’t seem to mind too much. Or, if he did, he never said anything about it. 

Bucky snorted to himself at the irony of that one. 

“Hey, Buck-”

The man in question turned his head to find Steve bearing down on them, a relieved look pasted across his broad face. Bucky threw him a small smile, before turning back to the girl kneeling in front of Stark’s door, her lower lip twisted between her teeth as she regarded the solid oak door. Steve slowed to a halt, hands on hips, and surveyed the scene in front of him. 

“I was, uh, looking for you…” Steve trailed off, talking ostensibly to Bucky but with his eyes on the dark-haired girl as she fed the slip of wire into the keyhole and wriggled it. His head tilted. Bucky observed them both passively from his position on the floor, back flat against the wall and legs stretched out in front of him. 

“You’re after Stark’s credit card?” The other man questioned, voice slow as he spoke, and Bucky knew that he was trying to balance the rights and wrongs of what the girl was doing. On the one hand, breaking and entering was clearly not in his retinue of acceptable behaviours and yet Bucky could see the draw there for him in playing Stark. 

“I already have his credit card,” she said, looking up briefly once more, so very almost the picture of innocence. 

“You do?” Steve asked, exchanging a glance with Bucky, who remained silent.

“Uh-huh,” she replied nonchalantly, turning back to the keyhole and jimmying the wire some more, her ear tilted toward the lock as she listened hard for the telltale clicks behind it. 

“Then why-”

“I don’t wanna give away my secrets,” the girl said apologetically interrupting him and, affording Steve a half-shrug with one shoulder and the barest glance across at the man before she re-focused once more on the door. “Or confidences. You know how it is.”

“Right,” Steve responded slowly, eyebrows knit together as he attempted to follow the logic outlaid for him. “So this is... Keeping up appearances?”

“Bingo,” the brunette answered, though whether she was talking to the confused super soldier stood over her, or to the door that swung open in front of them, it wasn’t entirely clear.


	6. December 6th

December 6th

 

Steve shook his head to himself as he recalled the previous day’s events. Beside him, Bucky looked up expectantly, one eyebrow raised. The blond missed the look, remembering the way that the girl had smiled so broadly when the door had swung open in front of her, the way she’d scrambled to her feet. 

The way Bucky had followed. 

“What are you looking for?”

Steve had stood, a little anxiously, on the other side of the threshold whilst Darcy dropped herself into Stark’s leather swing chair in front of his polished mahogany desk. Swivelling the chair, she had tossed him a wink before flipping up his laptop lid and typing furiously. 

For his part, Bucky merely wandered in and threw himself onto Stark’s chaise longue. Boots knocking together as he lay on his back, wholly unconcerned at the proceedings. Steve recalled flicking his tongue impatiently against the roof of his mouth. 

Darcy had wheeled herself closer to the desk and the laptop, fingers tapping ever faster over the keyboard as she scanned the screen in front of her face. Steve had watched as Bucky turned slightly, observing as the girl hunched over and chewed on her lower lip. 

Steve had hovered in the doorway. 

“Miss Lewis?”

“Huh?” She’d looked up, curls swinging as she glanced across at the blond man in the doorway, who by that point had his hands pressed on either side of the wooden frame as he leaned as far into the room as he dared. “Did you say something?”

Steve remembered the heavy rumble through his chest as he’d sighed in response to those large blue eyes. And that Bucky had grinned from his vantage point on the couch. It had thrust him back into an earlier time, and a similar set of blue eyes that sparkled with wrong-doing. 

“What are you-”

She’d held up a hand, face already turned back to the computer in front of her. 

“Can’t talk. Being devious.”

Steve had thrown his hands up in defeat. 

“You-” he’d said, pointing at Bucky, who arranged his face into as close to innocent as an ex-assassin was likely to be able to get away with. “You shouldn’t spend time with that girl. You’re far too alike.

Bucky had merely given him a hurt expression in response. 

“Oh, come on,” Darcy’d snorted from the desk. “I’m a poli-sci student accidentally caught up in alien activity who just wants the six college credits I’m totally owed and a few incriminating photos of Tony Stark I can use for bribery purposes.”

The room had paused, both men looking toward the girl before she glanced up at them again.

“I’m way worse than him.”


	7. December 7th

December 7th

 

Bucky wandered into the common room, eyes mostly on his own bare feet padding silently along the hardwood floor, only to have a large cardboard box thrust at him. Reflexively he took it, then registered that the dark haired girl was grinning up at him from the other side of it. 

“Brilliant, was beginning to think you’d never turn up,” the girl said cheerfully, as though she’d been expecting him. “You're on bauble duty,” she directed, before spinning on her heel and striding back to where an enormous tree was taking up most of the space.

Bucky looked down at the box in his arms, then back up when he heard her clear her throat. The girl gave him an expectant look, then jerked her head over her shoulder at the tree. He looked into the box again, filled with small shining balls. When he glanced back up, the girl was once more standing in front of him. 

She reached into the box and drew out one of the baubles. 

“Bauble-” she held it aloft. 

“-tree.” She gestured with the ball toward the large fir. 

Bucky shifted the box, and reached in with one hand, then hesitated. The girl gazed up at him, blue eyes raking over his face. He drew back his hand, wriggled its metal fingers and gave her a rueful look. 

“Psssh,” she said, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “You’ll be fine. There’s loads more where those came from, anyway.”


	8. December 8th

December 8th

 

Steve pushed open the large glass double doors to the foyer and was greeted by the sight of Bucky on a step ladder hanging tinsel over the imposing fireplace that dominated the space. The blond stopped short, the door hitting him square in the chest as he did so. 

He gaped, looking across at the lines of Bucky’s back as the other man stretched, metal arm glinting a little where his shirt had been rolled up to the sleeve. Bucky never rolled up his sleeve. Not on his left arm. It was rare that he didn’t wear a glove on that hand, even indoors.

Even, on occasion, with pyjamas as Steve had inadvertently discovered one night when Bucky - fresh from the depths of a particularly bad nightmare - had been persuaded to crawl into his bed. Steve had found Bucky curled up into his side the following morning, the both of them exhausted from Bucky's twitching body and cold sweats, a cool arm flung across his chest and a black leather glove encasing the hand it ended in. 

“I know, right?”

Steve blinked and looked to his right, finding Tony stood next to him with his arms folded across his chest and the right turned up, hand stroking his chin. The smaller man was muttering under his breath, until he caught Steve’s eye. 

“You see this?” He gestured broadly with a sweep of one hand. 

Steve shook his head, both in wonder and response. Bucky was now carefully hanging baubles in a garland, the branches snow-tipped and festive. 

“I wouldn’t have thought he-”

 

“That goddamned intern-”

Steve paused abruptly in what he was about to say, and turned to Stark. 

“Sorry, what?”

Tony bristled irritably, dusting off imaginary specks from his suit before deigning to respond. 

“Lewis,” he said shortly, with a sniff. “You seen those goddamned baubles up close?” 

Steve shook his head, glancing over his shoulder to Bucky who had managed to get tinsel entangled in the plates of his metal arm. He’d slumped onto the step ladder, dropping himself into a sitting position, and was grumpily tugging at the red and gold strands. 

The girl in question appeared, setting down another large crate of what Steve presumed to be even more Christmas decorations. Laughing, she sank to her knees in front of Bucky and knocked away his hand, expertly unthreading the strands and dropping them carelessly onto the floor at her side. 

Steve quirked a smile at the corner of his mouth. 

“-are you even listening, Rogers?” 

“Huh?” He said, inelegantly, and turning back to Stark as he did so. 

“My face, Rogers,” Stark snapped. “My face.” With that, he thrust a golden bauble into Steve’s face. The other man drew up an arm without thinking to shield himself, grasping at Stark’s wrist and stoppering the movement. He focused on the swinging ball that dangled in front of him. 

Stark’s face grinned back, etched into the glass.


	9. December 9th

December 9th

 

“I’m still not following,” Bruce said mildly, pulling his glasses off his nose one handed and blinking across the table at Tony. Salt and pepper curls flopped forward into his face as he bent forward slightly, cleaning his glasses poorly with the hem of his moth-eaten sweater. 

“You like having your face on things,” the scientist pointed out, holding the spectacles up to the light and squinting at the smears he’d managed to rub into the glass. “”It’s, you know, what you do.”

Tony sighed dramatically. 

“Look at you,” he said, tipping his head to one side and regarding the other man. “Probably the smartest man in the world - well, second-smartest - and there’s so much you still don’t understand about life.” Bruce, more than used to his friend’s ways, said nothing. 

“I do like having my face on things. I like having my name on things - it’s nice, little visual reminder to the competition-” he broke off, gazing at a point just over Bruce’s left shoulder, one hand rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Bruce, for his part, glanced up and shook his head before pouring out more orange juice. Tony was either thinking about Justin Hammer, or some new design on the Iron Man suit.

Possibly both. 

Bruce waited, chin resting into one hand as his elbow was propped on the kitchen counter, absently mindedly doodling equations onto a napkin. 

“But right now-”

Bruce jerked slightly, the ballpoint pen sliding across the napkin and through the last three lines he’d jotted down, at the sound of Tony’s voice next to his ear. He cleared his throat with a low rumble and glanced back over his shoulder at the other man who was gazing back at him expectedly. 

“Right now, Jolly Green Scientist, Pepper has specifically banned what she likes to call ‘displays of gratuitous narcissism’.” Bruce raised an eyebrow, Tony’s chin almost resting on his shoulder by that point. 

“Is that, uh, not your trademark?” He asked, running a hand through his curls and shaking the other man off. “Narcissism?”

Tony snorted in return. 

“I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” he said, loftily. “But the fact remains that Foster’s intern has decorated the entire building by now, with the help of the one-armed bandit, in tiny decorative versions of my face.”

“So Pepper-”

“-Is gonna roast my ass right about now, yes.”


	10. December 10th

December 10th

 

“Hey, Boss Lady.”

The other woman looked up briefly from her desk at Darcy, who slumped against the door frame, arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle. 

“The decorations look nice,” she said mildly, before wrinkling her nose at the paperwork in front of her once more. Darcy grinned broadly, before pushing off the frame and wandering into the room proper, scuffing her sneakers along the polished floor, hands now shoved into her jeans pockets as she mooched forward. 

“Could’ve been better,” she allowed. “I wanted to get a personalised Stark Fairy for the tree; but 3D printed models with accurate facial reconstruction have a pretty long lead time it turns out.”

“I thought I saw a fairy on top of the tree?” The other woman paused, looking up again with her pen hovering just above the crisp sheet of paper she’d been making notes on. 

“You did,” Darcy replied, dropping herself into a chair opposite the desk. She slung her legs over one arm and leaned back against the other before continuing. “It’s an old Barbie I got off eBay. Superglued some fabric wings to it, then switched the head with one from an Iron Man action doll. The face mask flips up and everything.”

There came a distinctly unladylike snort from the other side of the desk, before the scratching of pen to paper began again, and Darcy’s grin grew wider. 

“Well,” she said regretfully, swinging her legs off the chair and unfolding into a standing position with a dramatic yawn. “‘Spose I’d better be heading back downstairs.” With that, she stepped away, only to pause and turn back again, a rueful smile crossing her face briefly as she looked back over to the other woman. 

Darcy dug into her back pocket, and tossed what she found there onto the desk. A credit card clattered across the tabletop before coming to a halt at the edge of the paper. The words Stark Industries were stamped neatly across it, the silvery embossed letters still shining despite the battering it had taken. 

“Very good, Miss Lewis,” Pepper murmured, a mischievous smile turning up one corner of her mouth as slender fingers ran along the edge of the plastic card. Darcy was more than half way back to the door before the redhead spoke again. 

“And Mr Barnes?”

The words hung in the air between them before the little brunette turned once more back to the other woman. Her blue eyes were bright under the gaze fixed on her from the desk, and she pursed her lips in response.

“Better,” Darcy conceded. “I think.”

“Still not talking?” Pepper tilted her head to one side, the soft waves of her ponytail spilling over her shoulder as she moved. Darcy shook her head. 

“Still not talking,” she confirmed. “At least not to me.”

Pepper lay down her pen carefully, and straightened the piece of paper she’d been writing on briefly before sitting back in her chair with hands clasped together in her lap. 

“Keep going, Darcy,” she said. “It will take time, but anything worthwhile always does.”


	11. December 11th

December 11th

 

“Oh.”

Bucky looked up at the girl who whirled into the common room, brown hair tousled and eyes bright as she pulled up short at the sight of him, almost skidding across the floor as she did so. He quirked an eyebrow. 

“I was just, uh, looking for-” her breath was coming a little hard and she brushed hair back from where it was sticking a little to her forehead before she continued, gulping down air in an effort to catch herself properly. “-looking for Darcy? She’s not here, is she?”

Bucky looked around himself slowly, then back at the girl. He shook his head, shrugging, and her shoulders slumped a little. The white lab coat she wore was a little singed on one sleeve, and the other had a dark stain across it that looked to him suspiciously like blood. Bucky thought he vaguely remembered her from the day that he’d seen Darcy in the foyer. 

“Oh, right, well,” she said, wrinkling her nose in disappointment. “If you see her…”

The girl trailed off, half way into a turn of the heel that saw her hesitate, then complete the rotation to face him again. This time, her brown eyes had the same glint of excitement that she’d shown when she first burst in.

Bucky shifted back on the couch slightly. 

“I mean, I don’t need specifically Darcy. Really, I just need a solid pair of hands,” the girl said, taking a step forward and nodding at him enthusiastically, hands resting on her hips as she spoke. Bucky looked down at his own hands, then lifted the left one with an apologetic look. 

“Even better,” she answered, smiling even more broadly at the sight of it. Leaning forward, she grasped at his left hand and tugged backwards, urging him off the couch and into a standing position. “Promise you, it won’t take long at all.”

Bucky managed a hesitant half-smile in return, wondering quite when it was that small excitable women had managed to take over his life, but allowed himself to be steered out of the room and down the hallway nevertheless. 

“I’m Jane, by the way,” the girl chattered, still hanging onto his hand as she drummed against the elevator buttons. “Jane Foster? I guess you already know Darcy.” Bucky nodded shyly as she shoved him into the elevator, still talking whilst she tapped against the control panel to signal the right floor. 

“She mentioned about the Christmas decorations,” the newly christened Jane said, leaning back against the polished chrome wall and folding her arms over her chest as the elevator shuddered into action. “Said you did the tree in the foyer all by yourself in the end,”

Bucky nodded again, ducking his chin into his chest. He wasn’t quite used to having so much attention directed at him all in one go. He found himself wondering whether Darcy might show up wherever it was that this Jane was dragging him, and surprised himself by finding that he rather hoped she did. 

Also unused to the concept of wanting things, Bucky shoved that thought away firmly.


	12. December 12th

December 12th

 

“Hey, soldier.”

Bucky looked up, toward the door, where Darcy was leaning against the doorframe. He reflected briefly that she seemed to spend a lot of time leaning on things. She winked at him, grinning, and his hands dropped. 

“Hey-” 

Jane, the little scientist who’d commandeered him the day before - and then somehow turned up and tracked him down that morning as well - jerked his hands back in place around the gadget she’d insisted he needed to hold in place as she worked on it. Frowning at him behind the large goggles she wore, a soldering iron in one hand and her light brown hair gather back at the nape of her neck, she posed a formidable figure despite her small stature. 

Bucky threw Darcy an apologetic look before focusing his attention back to Jane. 

The dark haired girl laughed, and pushed herself off the doorframe, wandering over to the desk and slinging a carrier bag onto it. 

“Janey, when did you last eat?” Darcy asked, resting her chin on the other girl’s shoulder. Bucky’s eyes flickered between them, Darcy’s mouth quirking into a knowing smile and Jane glancing over her shoulder at her friend. 

Moments passed. 

“Ugh, fine,” Jane huffed, pulling off her goggles and resting the soldering iron back in its holder. “What did you bring this time?”

“Not salad, that’s for sure,” Darcy answered promptly, whirling away and grabbing up the carrier bag, emptying its contents across the desk. Chips, sandwiches, cans of drinks that rolled across the table and were caught by Jane. Bucky, still holding onto Jane’s gadget, stepped backward, unsure if he was included. 

Darcy, turning her head, fixed him with a smile. She moved in front of him, putting her hands over his. Bucky looked down, seeing her fingers near interlinked with his, and froze in place. The little brunette appeared not to notice, squeezing his hand slightly and guiding him to put the machine down on the desk. 

“C’mon,” she said lightly, handing him a packet of chips instead. “Little scientists and scientists’ assistants have to eat lunch.”


	13. December 13th

December 13th

 

Bucky awoke instantly, because that was how he was trained - not only by the Russians who stripped him systemically of his humanity and a myriad other things that constituted James Buchanan Barnes, nor even by the Americans in the war before he fell to his not-death, but rather burned into him as a young man with too much time and not quite enough money to do anything with it. 

It was, however, the Russian trained side of him that let him know he had awoken because he was being watched, and he sat bolt upright and tensed in bed with his right hand gripping the blade that slept under his pillow alongside him. 

Darcy took a step back away from him and the glint of the sharpened blade in his hand, though that perpetual smile was still on her face. Bucky narrowed his eyes but could not discern any sizable difference in it from any other time that she had graced him with a hint of teeth and the crinkles that creased the edges of her eyes. 

She raised an eyebrow and he realised that he was still holding the knife defensively. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his hand and twisted where he sat so that he could slide it back under his pillow. Twisting back, he came face to face with Darcy, who was now sat next to him on the bed. Bucky reeled back slightly, drawing the covers up his shirtless chest. 

“Hey, it’s not the first time someone’s pulled a knife on me,” she said cheerfully, tossing him a one-shouldered shrug and apparently taking no notice of his shifting self, blue eyes flickering over the girl perched next to him. Bucky swallowed. 

“So,” Darcy carried on regardless. “I was just wondering if you wanted to be in our Secret Santa?”


	14. December 14th

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so far behind! Sorry guys, I've been out visiting various peoples in the spirit of the season, so I'm playing catch up now.

December 14th

“What’s a Secret Santa?” Steve asked, standing at their kitchen counter and absentmindedly poking at the omelette he was attempting to make. Bucky shrugged in response, handing over the scrap of paper that Darcy had given him when he’d hesitantly nodded back at her. 

“Some kind of … Present game,” Bucky mumbled, twirling a fork in his right hand and wondering whether he had the dexterity to manage it with his left. Steve, holding the scrap of paper that Bucky had handed him, looked doubtful. 

“You buy ‘em somethin’, and they don’t know about it.” Bucky clarified, leaving Steve none the wiser. Looking down at the paper in his hand, Steve unfolded it awkwardly, somehow wrangling the spatula along with it, and peered at the name scrawled poorly over the lined paper. 

“Tony?” he asked in disbelief, turning slowly back to the dark-haired man lounging over the counter opposite. Bucky rolled his eyes, ankles hooked around the bars of the stool he was perched on, and snagged the last of Steve’s coffee whilst the other man was distracted.

“But… Tony’s impossible to buy for,” Steve protested, dropping the scrap on the counter and turning back to the pan. “The man has literally everything.”

Bucky thought privately that it was hardly the fact that Stark had more money than either he or Steve would have ever been able to comprehend, back in the ‘30s, that made him challenging to buy for.


	15. December 15th

December 15th

“You gave him Stark?”

Darcy’s head popped up from behind the tree, where she had been fixing a stray length of tinsel. She looked offended, tossing an unimpressed look at Jane before shoving a hand back through her touseled curls and straightening up. 

“It’s secret, Janey,” she answered, extricating herself from behind the branches with some difficulty, pausing to gaze up at the tree that towered over her. Most of them had been completed the week previous, her not-exactly-happy-helper trailing after her dutifully nonetheless. This one she had saved until last, the final tree in the whole tower - the one in the small apartment she shared with Jane. Darcy executed a small pirouette across the floor before dropping herself into the couch next to the other girl.

“Emphasis on 'secret'," she insisted, pasting as innocent a look as she was able to manage onto her face. "Meaning I don’t control who gets what.”

Jane gave her a flat look, before passing over a mug of cocoa. 

“I don’t,” Darcy protested, drawing her feet up onto the couch so that her knees were bent in front of her face, hands wrapped around the steaming mug and lips pursed so that she could blow gently across it. Bare toes wriggled as they hung over the edge of the couch, Darcy's shoulders slumping in pleasure as she took her first sip. 

Jane tilted her head, and said nothing. Darcy sighed. 

“It’ll be good for them.”

Jane spluttered. 

“Them?”


	16. December 16th

December 16th

 

“What the hell is this?”

Bruce looked up briefly from his notes as Stark crashed through the lab doors. Shaking his head slightly at the other man, he managed to snatch the papers out of the way before Tony dropped his ass onto the desk. 

“Please, by all means, come on in,” Bruce said under his breath, and resigned himself to the fact he’d lost at least the next half hour, if not more. 

“-who really wants to do Secret Santa, anyway?” Tony continued, not noticing that his audience hadn’t been listening. Bruce blinked, and settled back on his chair - not before grabbing up his coffee mug out of the way of Tony’s gesturing hands, just in time to save it from being knocked clean from the desk. He placed it carefully on the desk behind him, then pulled his glasses from his face and cleaned them carefully with the hem of his sweater. 

“I’m not sure I’m following-” he began tentatively, rubbing small circles into the glass, gently holding his sweater between thumb and forefinger. 

“Secret Santa, Brucie, keep up,” Tony said impatiently, pushing a hand back through his dark hair and dishevelling it. The other man frowned briefly, shaking his head at the billionaire. He was about to mention that he damn well knew what a Secret Santa was, when Tony thrust a scrap of paper at his face. 

Bruce fumbled for it, nearly dropping his glasses in the process. Managing to keep hold of them - just - he pushed them carefully back onto his face and then drew the paper up in front of his eyes, focusing carefully on the near illegible scrawl that danced across it. 

“Did you write this?” He asked suspiciously, lowering the note slightly to eye Tony over it. Stark made a rude noise. 

“Of course not,” he said, hopping down from the table and beginning to pace. “Why on earth would I write that?” 

“I’ve never seen anyone else with such awful handwriting,” Bruce said mildly. “Awful to think two of you exist.”

Tony loosened his tie as he walked, tugging at the silk harshly and inadvertently tightening it in the process. Grumbling under his breath he paused, using both hands to pull at it. Bruce sighed and got to his feet, discarding the little bit of paper on the desk next to him as he knocked Tony’s hands away and deftly unmade the knot he’d worsened. 

“What’s the problem, exactly?” Bruce said, sitting back down and taking up his coffee, only to find it lukewarm and rapidly cooling. Making a face he tipped it down the sink to his left as he turned his attention back to Stark. “Just buy the present. It’s not hard, Tony.”

“It’s Barnes,” the other man said flatly. “Bucky goddamned Barnes. What the hell am I supposed to buy him. WD40?”


	17. December 17th

December 17th

 

Bucky shoved the laptop away from him with a grumble and a muttered curse that had Steve quirking an eyebrow. Catching the other man’s eye, Bucky huffed in response to the silent reproach, and kicked his feet out in front of him mulishly. 

“What’s the problem, exactly?” Steve asked, settling down on the couch next to Bucky, coffee in hand and the morning newspaper in the other. The dark haired man muttered something unintelligible and poked one foot toward the laptop screen. Steve focused, leaning forward slightly, and as he did Bucky plucked the mug from his hand. 

“Secret Santa?” Steve asked, sitting back on the couch and waiting on Bucky to drain half the coffee before handing it back over to him. He was too used to the other man’s abuse of personal boundaries to be too irritated by the show. 

Bucky for his part shoved a hand back through his shaggy hair before dropping his head back on the couch and groaning dramatically. 

“Why can’t you do it?” He mumbled, eyes closed and both hands pushed back into his hair as he let his head rest back into the couch. Steve laughed, shaking his head. 

“It’s your thing, Buck,” Steve answered, amused. “You’re the one who can’t say no to a pretty face.”

“Stark ain’t got a pretty face,” Bucky grumbled, hauling himself forward and grabbing at the laptop again. He jabbed at the keys, frowning as he pulled up three pages he didn’t intend to find and a jaunty jingle suddenly blaring from the speakers. He slammed the lid shut, doing nothing to cut the noise. 

“I didn’t mean Stark,” Steve said mildly, as Bucky tentatively opened the laptop lid again, and hit every key he reach in an attempt to stop the repeating jingle. Steve leaned across and closed the tab that was playing, shooting his friend a smile as he did so. Bucky reluctantly returned it before focusing back on the webpage he’d been intending to browse. 

Steve waited, feet propped up on the coffee table and hands wrapped around the cooling mug he still held. 

“Wait,” Bucky’s head lifted and he turned to Steve with confusion in his blue eyes. “Who did you mean?”


End file.
